He had been oppressed with the thought of the other injured men. He must go and see them. He could not rest till he had personally visited them. He went out and easily ascertained where the men lived. Never before did the contrast between the dull, uninteresting row of shop tenements and his own elegant home rise up go sharply before him. In fact, he had never given it much thought before. Now as he looked forward to the end of the week, and knew that at its close he would be no richer, no better able to enjoy luxuries than the dead man lying in No. 760, he wondered vaguely but passionately how he could make use of what he had heaped together to make the daily lives of some of these poor men happier.
He found the man who had lost both eyes sitting up in bed and feeling in a pathetic manner of a few blocks of wood which one of the children in the room had brought to him. He was a big, powerful man like his brother, the large-boned Dane, and it seemed a very pitiful thing that he should be lying there like a baby when his muscles were as powerful as ever. The brother was in the room with the injured man, and he said to him:
"Olaf, Mr. Hardy come to see you."
"Hardy? Hardy?" queried the man in a peevish tone. "What do I know him to be?"
"The manager. The one who donate so really much moneys to you."
"Ah?" with an indescribable accent. "He make me work on a Sunday. He lose me my two eyes. A bad man, Svord! I will no have anything to do with him."
And the old descendant of a thousand kings turned his face to the wall, and would not even so much as make a motion towards his visitor. His brother offered a rude apology. Mr. Hardy replied in a low tone:
"Say nothing about it. I deserve all your brother says. But for a good reason I wish Olaf would say he forgives me."
Mr. Hardy came nearer the bed and spoke very earnestly and as if he had known the man intimately:
"I did you a great wrong to order the work on Sunday, and in not doing my duty concerning the inspection of the machinery. I have come to say so, and to ask your forgiveness. I may never see you again. Will you say to me, 'Brother, I forgive you'?"